Not to be missed

01. Massive Attack
The otherworldly beats of Massive Attack have been swimming around in our brains for just shy of two decades now, but I’m pretty sure most dance fans will still be able to remember where they were the first time they heard ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ back in 1991. Since then, the Bristol duo have coined such pioneering electronic gems as ‘Teardrop’ and ‘Angel’, both of which will be getting a live airing on Sunday night, as well as tracks from soulful fifth album Heligoland. Even more good news; reports from Herefordshire’s Big Chill Festival suggest Picnic dwellers can expect a doom-laden, career-spanning performance of truly epic proportions.

02. LCD Soundsystem
Hearts were broken in April of this year when James Murphy was forced to cancel two shows in Dublin’s Tripod, due to the persistent wrath of Mount Eyjafjallajökul. On the bright side, this means there’ll be even more love in the room for the 40-year-old New Jerseyite when he appears in Stradbally for his first Irish show in three years.

03. Modest Mouse
This Washington State quintet have five studio albums and a whopping nine EPs under their belt, but Modest Mouse aren’t on the road this summer plugging any one of them! Nope, the rustic post-punksters have resumed touring simply because they “feel like it”, which, when you’ve got tunes like ‘Float On’ and ‘We’ve Got Everything’ in your alt. disco arsenal, I figure is as good a reason as any. The Modest Mouse live show is a veritable lesson in atmospherics, making it the perfect blend of mainstream indie-rock and OTT gothic pop to help you wind down after a frantic first day at EP.

04. Janelle Monáe
It’s been pretty well documented that 24-year-old Sci-Fi robo-soulstress Janelle Monáe left theatre school when she realised that she had the potential to change the world with music. In the last 12 months, she’s gotten props from Prince, inspired an international dance craze and turned a Fritz Lang movie into the most exciting debut album in eons… Well, it’s a start. A musical bedlamite and a lyrical prophet; the world is still just a little bit shellshocked by the outrageously talented Ms. Monáe, but one thing’s for sure; a lady who recalls Judy Garland and Andre 3000 in the same three-minute neo-soul ditty is a very exciting live prospect indeed. Catch her on Friday.

05. eels
You probably know eels, the proud baby of Mark Oliver ‘E’ Everett, best for trip-rock anthem ‘Novocaine For The Soul’, but the Californian outfit has produced a hell of a lot of material since that 1996 hit, namely eight studio albums (including two so far this year!), five live records and the soundtrack to Jim Carey comedy Yes Man. Expect to hear a hefty dollop of material from E’s autobiographical Hombre Lobo, End Times, and Tomorrow Morning trilogy of albums, masterpieces of moody chamber pop all. The band the Hollywood fatcats just can’t get enough of grace us with their presence on Friday, after an agonising two-year break from our fair shores.

06. Gil Scott-Heron
Frankly, Gil Scott-Heron is a man who could put the musical resume of most of the acts on the Electric Picnic bill to shame. In a career that spans 45 years, the Chicago visionary has toured with Stevie Wonder and been regularly hailed as “the Godfather of rap” and a “black Bob Dylan”. Of course, he’s also been incarcerated twice for possession of cocaine, but it musn’t be all bad in the slammer, as his stint in New York State Prison inspired the 61-year-old to write I’m New Here – his first album in 13 years. “Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles,” he warns listeners in his liner notes “... think about what you got.” Scott-Heron performs his moody urban poetry on Saturday.
07. Two Door Cinema Club
Norn Iron’s finest electro-rockers absolutely smashed it on the Main Stage at Oxegen this year and by all accounts they’ve spent the last month doing exactly that on platforms in Australia, Korea, China and Japan (phew!). The boys from Bangor have also just received word that their debut album Tourist History has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide, thanks to the support of celebrity fans like Kanye West and Daft Punk and of course, courtesy of hopelessly catchy alt. pop numbers like ‘I Can Talk’ and ‘Something Good Can Work’. If all that’s not enough to tempt you from your Bivy Sack on Sunday (a rain jacket, sleeping bag and tent all in one), take heed that TDCC’s American tour with Versailles rockers Phoenix has taught them a thing or two about how to put on a truly blistering live show.

08. Neon Indian
Specialising in pscychedelic electronica dubbed ‘chillwave’ by scenesters, Neon Indian sound like an artier MGMT or Yeasayer. Song titles like ‘Should Have Taken Acid With You’ and ‘Terminally Chill’ speak for themselves. Brilliant stuff, which he’ll be belting out on Sunday.

09. Beardyman
One of the most respected beatboxers in the world and among the most YouTube-d people on the continent, Darren ‘Beardyman’ Foreman has managed to turn his outrageous racket of the mouth into a full-time musical career. The young Londoner is a firm favourite at festivals at home and overseas simply because his largely-improvised stage show is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before – a technicolour spectrum of sounds looped and spliced up through four Kaoss pads, always delivered with a comedic edge. Expect the beats and hisses to get even crazier on Sunday as Foreman is currently prepping his debut studio album for release.

10. ASIWYFA
They play an average of 170 gigs a year and when last we caught up with them they were touring around Europe with John Paul Jones, Josh Homme and Dave Grohl’s supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. It’s safe to say everything about And So I Watch You From Afar is pretty colossal. The Belfast instrumental lovelies are never ones to disappoint in a live setting, so whether you’ve come to the Picnic for Cathy Davey or The Horrors, ASIWYFA’s anarchic, wordless rock will have you hooting and hollering along with the best of them on Saturday.